Are you still buying your contacts at Specsavers?

A friend of mine is helping out with a website called VisionCompare.co.uk and he got in touch with me as he knows I wear glasses and love saving money! Basically they are a price comparison site for contact lenses so you can potentially save a ton of money by finding a cheaper provider.

Thought you guys might like get a heads up so here’s a guest blog post from him (not sponsored). Enjoy!

You might be able to save more than 50% by switching….

Specsavers are one of the biggest chains of opticians in the UK, selling glasses as well as branded and own-brand contact lenses. Many people like them for their free eye tests (if you buy contacts/glasses), good service, and easy direct debit subscriptions.

However, they‘re definitely not the cheapest for contact lenses. It’s likely that if you’re using Specsavers contact lenses on a regular basis you could save more than 50% or £100 a year by buying exactly the same contact lenses elsewhere! Even if you continue to get your eye tests done at Specsavers you’ll be saving money. (though you could save even more by using these free eye test deals)

How does this work?

Let’s look at an example. A friend of mine has been using Specsavers’ easyvision monthly opteyes contact lenses. As listed on the Specsavers website, these cost £15/month or £45 for 3 pairs.

Now these contact lenses are exactly the same as CooperVision Biofinity lenses (you can check this by looking up ‘CooperVision Biofinity’ in the Find My Lenses search box on the Specsavers website).

Normally we’d expect own-brand products to be cheaper, but the opposite is true for contact lenses! The Specsavers lenses are exactly the same product in a different box, and somehow they’re able to charge more for them.

Looking at prices for the original manufacturer’s equivalent across online retailers, it’s possible to get them for as little as £21.90 for 3 pairs — a saving of more than 50%!

How do I check how much I could save on my contact lenses?

Now you might not use these exact contact lenses, but the same applies for almost any own brand contact lenses. If you already know what your contact lenses are called, you can just look them up on visioncompare.co.uk. If you use Boots or Specsavers own brand contacts, here’s a simple three-step process to finding out how much you can save:

Find out what the original manufacturer’s name for your contact lenses is. You can look this up in a table like this one. In the example above, the original manufacturer’s name for the product is “CooperVision Biofinity”.

Go to visioncompare.co.uk and look up the original manufacturer’s product name you just found to see prices across 10+ stores at once.

Pick the store you prefer, enter your prescription, and get them shipped to you!

It’s that easy. Why wait? Start saving now!

PS: we’re always looking for feedback! If you have any ideas, comments, or suggestions, we’d love to hear from you. Catch us on [email protected] or @visioncompareuk on Twitter.